By Prince Osuagwu

THE two most important demands Nigerian subscribers make of their service providers are tariff reduction and improved quality of service. However, the two demands would appear to be mutually exclusive, going by the country’s level of infrastructural development.

Meanwhile, as the operators try to yield to these demands without growing adequate capacity, service quality strains, particularly when reducing tariff .

Telecoms Mast

In fact, it is estimated that GSM operators need to roll out additional 50,000 base stations to match the demand for service at the marketplace. This is even when the challenging operating environment inhibits the base station roll out.

It is therefore no coincidence that most massive slashes in tariffs by telecom operators in Nigeria in the last few years have been attended by a period of sub-par quality of service across the nation. In most of these cases, the regulator wields the sledge hammer.

However, the operators have also realised that satisfying these demands, hold the key to their breakthrough in the ever competitive Nigerian telecom market and therefore have started seeking cutting-edge solutions for local challenges.

Part of the innovative solutions they believe could meet the two topmost demands all at once, is the Dynamic Pricing solution.

Dynamic pricing makes it possible for telecom operators to reduce tariff without necessarily compounding network congestion. It is a solution that offers subscribers generous tariff discounts in areas where demand on network resources is low, and offer marginal or no tariff discounts in busy network areas. That way, subscribers in a busy or high traffic network area will be encouraged to defer their calls till they get to low traffic network areas where they can enjoy generous discounts.

In a nutshell, the solution tries impress upon telecom users that making calls during busy hours from a busy business area, will make them pay more than those who would delay the calls till they get to less busy locations.

With this message in mind, customers generally seek low traffic areas to make their calls, thereby helping to reduce congestion in busy network areas.

Consequently, this solution creatively avails subscribers the much desired tariff reduction, while creating an avenue to control the perennial issue of congestion in certain areas within the network. The solution is a feature of Next Generation Prepaid platform made possible by the technology backbone called Intelligent Network, IN.

Almost all the telecom operators have adopted this solution with different names and various tariff discounts. Second National Operator, Globacom tagged its own dynamic pricing platform as Glo Flexi, Etisalat calls its own HomeZone while Airtel Nigeria said its own is 2Good Time.

Just recently, MTN Nigeria also introduced its own. Tagged MTN Zone, the network said its own package creates a slightly different scenario, giving subscribers as much as 100 percent tariff discount, depending on where they are making their calls.

Chief Marketing Officer, MTN Nigeria, Mr. Larry Annetts, described MTN Zone as   “a product of our desire to continuously delight our customers and give them much more value for their money. The service offers attractive discounts to our customers depending on the prevailing discount rates available on the cell site from which they receive signal.”

MTN said it had previously run the service on a successful pilot phase in select locations in the country before fully developing and activating it in Lagos, Rivers, Imo, Anambra, Ogun and Bayelsa States.

Annets said that once activated, the screen of the subscriber’s phone will subsequently display available discounts wherever he or she moves to. The broadcast messages are updated and transmitted regularly to keep customers abreast of prevailing rates where ever they may go within the area of coverage of the service.

Another interesting feature of the service is the ability of customers to receive discounts for calls and short messages they send to friends, business partners and loved ones on other networks and even on international lines.

The service allows customers to have control over their spending on calls. They can decide to delay certain calls till they get to their homes or offices where they usually enjoy generous discounts on calls. The service comes as an added value to customers who are already enjoying some level of discounts on bouquets like Pulse and Family and Friends.

Meanwhile the company’s Corporate Services Executive, Mr. Wale Goodluck, said that the introduction of MTN Zone and other dynamic tariff plans have proven that the service providers are not leaving anything to chance when it comes to customer satisfaction.